Sam (left) and Jonah Buffa pose for a photo inside FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

Sam (left) and Jonah Buffa pose for a photo inside FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 2 of 20

The FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission is scheduled to open in early May.

The FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission is scheduled to open in early May.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 3 of 20

The FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission features an all mahogany backbar. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

The FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission features an all mahogany backbar. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 4 of 20

Jonah Buffa shows off a first place certificate for handcarving on the inside of the back bar at the FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

Jonah Buffa shows off a first place certificate for handcarving on the inside of the back bar at the FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 5 of 20

Image 6 of 20

The Brooklyn Circus melds preppy old school looks with more modern lines.

The Brooklyn Circus melds preppy old school looks with more modern lines.

Photo: Gabriel Garcia

Image 7 of 20

Kiya Babzani poses for a photo inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Kiya Babzani poses for a photo inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 8 of 20

Jeans are seen on display inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Jeans are seen on display inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 9 of 20

Books are seen on display inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Books are seen on display inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 10 of 20

Image 11 of 20

The FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission features an all mahogany backbar. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

The FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission features an all mahogany backbar. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 12 of 20

The exterior of The Brooklyn Circus, a prep-meets-street menswear and womenswear shop that started in New York and opened a location in the Western Addition a few years ago.

The exterior of The Brooklyn Circus, a prep-meets-street menswear and womenswear shop that started in New York and opened a location in the Western Addition a few years ago.

Photo: Gabriel Garcia

Image 13 of 20

The Brooklyn Circus melds preppy old school looks with more modern lines.

The Brooklyn Circus melds preppy old school looks with more modern lines.

Photo: Gabriel Garcia

Image 14 of 20

The Brooklyn Circus melds preppy old school looks with more modern lines.

The Brooklyn Circus melds preppy old school looks with more modern lines.

Photo: Gabriel Garcia

Image 15 of 20

Image 16 of 20

Sam (left) and Jonah Buffa pose for a photo inside FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

Sam (left) and Jonah Buffa pose for a photo inside FSC Barber located at 696 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011. The store is scheduled to open in early May.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 17 of 20

Kiya Babzani shows off the weft of a pair of jeans that is dyed with mud inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Kiya Babzani shows off the weft of a pair of jeans that is dyed with mud inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 18 of 20

Lewis Nightingale looks through shirts inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Lewis Nightingale looks through shirts inside Self Edge located at 714 Valencia in the Mission on April 14, 2011.

Photo: Susana Bates, Special To The Chronicle

Image 19 of 20

The Brooklyn Circus carries Happy Socks.

The Brooklyn Circus carries Happy Socks.

Photo: Gabriel Garcia

Image 20 of 20

Dapper style pops up in the neighborhood

1 / 20

Back to Gallery

There was a time when men needing professional or everyday apparel had few options outside of downtown retailers. But these days, style-savvy guys have an ever-increasing number of cutting-edge options for clothing, accessories and grooming right in their own neighborhoods.

"It's a new generation of retailers. It's the new neighborhood shops that are what's newer and cooler," says Robert Patterson, owner of Lower Haight store Revolver.

If there's a molten-hot core of the expanding men's style landscape in the city right now, it's the Mission District, where Bay Area newcomers such as New York-based F.S.C. Barber and a brother company, clothing retailer Freeman'sSporting Club, are planning an early May opening just up the street from Self Edge, which has been a destination for cult Japanese denim brands since opening in 2005 and has since expanded to New York and Los Angeles.

A few blocks up on Valencia, the Common relocated from SoMa in early March and brought with it its nostalgically preppy shirts and men's accessories. Street wear label Benny Gold plans to occupy a new, expanded space on 16th Street by month's end. And come June, Revolver's Patterson is slated to open a store carrying, along with women's apparel and home decor, small men's designer labels such as Creep Clothing and John Bull.

President Trump addresses nation after mass shooting at Florida SchoolWhite House

The trend isn't confined to the Mission. Last fall, Welcome Stranger, from the owners of Azalea and Tobi.com, added to the menswear options in Hayes Valley. This spring saw high-end men's consignment retailer Sui Generis occupy an expanded space on upper Market Street, and Maas & Stacks opened nearby a few weeks ago with an upscale array of menswear from labels such as Patrick Ervell and Band of Outsiders.

In Cow Hollow, Sean, exclusive retailer of French label Emile Lafaurie, relocated in March from one end of Union Street to a larger space between Fillmore and Webster streets in the heart of the neighborhood's shopping corridor and has hopes of opening a Noe Valley location this year.

Appetite for style

Underlying it all is retailer confidence in men's increasing appetites for style.

"In San Francisco, I've seen a dramatic change in the last couple of years. I think we've gotten past the hangover of the 1960s, and I think the younger generation is not beholden to that aesthetic of San Francisco that has existed for so long," says F.S.C. Barber's Sam Buffa, who grew up near Half Moon Bay and who is opening the West Coast outpost of his barbershop with brother Jonah Buffa, a Mission District resident.

Instead of the uber-casual look that once typified California style, the Buffas aim to attract men with haircuts and straight-razor shaves delivered by barbers trained in styles ranging from simple buzz cuts to the Prohibition-era looks popularized by HBO's "Boardwalk Empire," using badger-hair shaving brushes and apothecary-inspired men's skin care from brands such as Malin + Goetz and Baxter of California.

Furthering the nostalgic atmosphere are interiors boasting 1920s porcelain barber chairs, a vintage shoeshine station, antique lighting fixtures and a mahogany back bar that won the gold medal prize for hand carving at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

Bygone eras

While it is the newest San Francisco business catering to men to do so, F.S.C. Barber is hardly alone in its obsession with the past. In fact, several leaders in men's style in the city take their cues from bygone eras.

"The whole dapper prep look is definitely trending right now," says Gabriel Garcia of Fillmore Street men's store the Brooklyn Circus, whose varsity jackets, porkpie hats, tweed scarves and suede brogues are designed with customers in their 20s and 30s in mind.

Launched in Brooklyn in 2006, the brand from Garcia, a Bay Area native, and business partner Ouiji Theodore opened shop here in 2008 and has found success reinventing garments its customers' grandfathers might have worn as contemporary street wear. But it's about more than just looking a certain way.

"I noticed that people started treating me differently when I had a shirt and tie on," Garcia says, recalling the dress code at the first job he got as a teenager.

The communicative power of fashion is a subject Garcia and Theodore hope to explore in depth this fall, when they plan to team up with musician Mos Def and popular men's style blogs to bring roundtable discussions focused on "style and character" to college campuses on both coasts.

"We feel like urban America has a certain stigma about it, and we're here to hopefully refine the image," Garcia says.

Reimagined retro

For Self Edge's Kiya Babzani, a love of 1950s-born rockabilly led to the founding of his stores, known for Japanese selvedge denim labels unavailable elsewhere in the United States. Much of the apparel Babzani sells is not simply retro-inspired but produced using vintage machinery procured by the Japanese manufacturers he works with.

"Japan has a bigger collection of functioning vintage textile and sewing machines than anywhere in the world," he says.

Those machines allow for the making of garments nearly identical to those produced in previous decades. That's appealing to Babzani's customers, many of whom revel in clothing details with the same kind of passion others reserve for cars or music.

"We have guys that come into the store and ask us the stitch count of a certain shirt," Babzani says.

And that observation, perhaps, says more than anything else about the driving force behind the increasing presence of style-minded men's destinations in city neighborhoods.

Offers Babzani:

"Guys love details and getting really, really into something. It's another way of saying that it's a hobby. Menswear has turned into a hobby."